500

An hour of swimming in Brno’s only 50m pool. Nothing more to say about it, I think. These sessions are very pleasant. I do them before work and have the feeling I am being very efficient with my time. The 60 minutes in the pool amount to about 85 minutes of gross training time. It is a different movement than the erg, but it is still quite taxing, and it is about the only way to prepare my shoulders for the transition back to OTW rowing.

Oh, and I did 21 laps if I counted well. One more than normally.

Thursday – Steady State

A quick steady state before switching on the TV and watching back the recordings of the 10k Olympic speed skating.

I did row this on Zwift (taking the mountain route as you can see from the screenshot) to make the time go faster, but I have found an irritating bug on using Zwift and Painsled, at least in combination with Rowsandall.com. After 50 minutes, my “Just Row” started saving on Painsled, and then automatically started recording the second part.

Luckily, rowsandall.com allows to glue workouts together, so here is the full row:

The speed skating was very exciting to watch, although it is a pity that Sven Kramer didn’t win.

I had estimated this training to give a TSS score of 50, but it turned out to be 66. I am still learning to plan my training according to TSS.

Friday

Driving to work on Friday morning:

I really need this winter to end. The lake is covered partially with a thin layer of ice. I hope that once the winter finally goes away (in March?) and not just for a week, light in January, we will be able to return to OTW rowing pretty soon.

Friday’s workout was a repeat of the workout I did on January 18, but instead of 2×10 500s, it was reduced to 2×800:

2x(8x500m/70″)/5′ at stroke rate 26-27spm

I didn’t look up the results of January 18 (1:51 pace). Instead, I just did a 3k warming up with some speed bumps and then just settled into a pace I thought would be sustainable. I ended up my first interval in just 1:50, and so the challenge was to get under 1:50 for each next interval, while respecting the stroke rate guidance.

In the first series, I was able to sustain a sub 1:50 pace, but it broke me in the second series.

I was so disappointed that in the final interval I forced myself to do a desperate final 250m, which is in itself a good race preparation. There is always a bit more in the tank.

I did a 1250m cooling down at a very slow pace, then had difficulty walking up the stairs. In the evening, I watched the replay of the ladies speed skating 5k, which turned out to be another very exciting race to watch.

Scores

In the new Planning feature of rowsandall.com, I had estimated this session to be a TSS 85 one. I ended up 113 including warming up and cooling down, in just over 70 minutes (rowing about 16km). That means that in terms of suffering this session was almost as hard as a full hour of power. That seems about right.

I think the planning and tracking is very exciting, especially as I learn to plan better in terms of TSS or TRIMP. Both the steady state session and the 16×500 were harder than I planned for, and that means that I may have to turn the dial back for a day or two.